Economics of Fantasy Football

There I was sitting in microeconomics class during my freshman year of college (longer ago than I care to admit) thinking, “Man, this sucks!  I’ll never use this in a million years.”  Well, little did I know you could not escape the law of supply and demand.  It follows us and invades every part of our life, if only any of us understood it!

We can use this law in fantasy football as well.  I am in a league that has been in existence since 1990 and is very resistant to change.  In fact, we still use the old Danny Sheridan scoring system.  Basic TD league, 3 points for passing TD, 3 points for a receiving TD, 6 points for a rushing TD, 3 points for a FG 44 yards or less and 6 points for a FG over 45 yards.  At first, I struggled with the concept of fantasy football in general, “Why hasn’t Troy Aikman been drafted yet, he’s a great QB?”.

We finally decided to change things around; we went to an auction format.  I paid 22 dollars (out of 200) for Morten Andersen, and struggled because of my poor spending.  But, the law of supply and demand started to rear its ugly head and I didn’t see it.  We have eight teams and have a 16 man roster (2 QB start 1, 4 RB start 3, 6 WR start 4, 2 K start 1, 2 Defenses start 1).  I was told by a friend to project the statistics for each player.  We had the classic argument about my projections being way off and such, but in the end he won out.  I projected the statistics and as advertised I was way off.  But, I had discovered a very important tool in winning my league.  I saw when I projected statistics that a WR wasn’t worth anything in this league.  In 1997, I had Antonio Freeman, my number one receiver, projected for about 13 touchdowns ( 39 points).  Then I looked at my other positions and saw the light.  My LOWEST-rated QB was going to score 66 points (22 touchdown passes) and my lowest rated RB was going to score 36 points (6 touchdowns, Robert Holcombe as a rookie for those ‘lowly’ Rams).  At this point, I figured out that a receiver under this scoring system is worth very little as far as the whole team is concerned.

I had done the VBD numbers and the top guys looked like this:

QB1 Brett Favre   points 125  VBD 44

RB1 Terrell Davis points 91    VBD 43

WR  Antonio Freeman Points 40  VBD 19

Even if you don’t like VBD, I think it important to see this huge disparity of points scored by different positions in your league.

Next, I realized that there would be a shortage of good starters at RB.  This was inevitable, due to the fact that we start 3 RB.  With 8 teams, that amounted to 24 starters.  With more and more teams going to RBBC or the specialist, it’s harder and harder to find two great starting running backs for a fantasy team (much less three).  Seeing that the QBs are as valuable as the running backs is a find also.  But since you need three running backs and only one quarterback, they become even more valuable based on that VBD number.  If you get too far behind in the running back category you will lose no matter how good your receivers are.

Let’s apply this same thinking to a sixteen-team league and see how it pans out.  For the sake of this example, let’s start 1 QB , 2 RB , and 3 WR with the same number of backups.  The first thing that should scream at you is someone is going to be without a backup QB for bye weeks.  Do you want to be that person?  So you immediately know, because of that terrible economics class, that Quarterbacks will be more valuable.  The running back situation is worse, 32 starting running backs with 32 backups.  If you aren’t careful, you will end up with some practice squad running back. Therefore, they are more valuable just because of the limited supply.  Receivers are deeper, even though you will need 48 starters and 48 backups.  Since most teams have 3 receiver sets and a tight end on the field at one time or another during a game that is 124 possible receivers, with only 96 needed.  Again receivers aren’t as valuable just from the point of view that you can at least get one that will see the field (as opposed to NFL Europe).

Hope these thoughts help.  I didn’t realize these things until I actually sat down and looked at my horrible projections.  Hopefully, this will at least talk you into trying to project statistics while keeping your scoring system and your roster requirements in mind.

If not, feel free to join my leagues, and take all the *stud*  receivers you want!